STEPPE BANDITS IN POROS

[Dionaea]

What are you on about? Bandits need to be cleared out when they're harassing villagers trying to get to town to supply it. They need to be cleared out when you send a party member to go recruit.

That's why you have parties to clear out bandits, that's why you form them and give them some of your horsemen when you form a party in the region you need to protect (probably where your workshops are) and more importantly that is why you take out all the hideouts you can find.

Also you could always chase the steppe bandits a bit until they aren't in your economic area anymore (only villages linked tot he city and castle linked villages nearby will trade with the city where your workshop is) and then let them be someone else's problem

It's not about my 'playstyle', it's about playing the actual game. And I highly doubt micromanagement of inventory, troops, prisoners, and all that other tedious stuff is part of anyone's 'playstyle'. Are there people that legitimately enjoy clicking hundreds of times in the UI just to get their party speed to 7.8?

Judging from some advice people give over on reddit, and some youtube videos and considering some people meticulously write down every trade tip they get in the tavern on actual paper and then calculate their optimal routes to take and carefully manage the animals in their inventory and taking "herd" and it's influence on party speed into account, then yes, yes some people enjoy micromanaging every detail. I've even seen people complain there is too much war and fighting in their new favorite medieval trading simulator

EDIT: you obviously aren't equipped to be a steppe bandit hunter so why do you expect to be one? settle with chasing them off and try not to set up shop in lands where they will be numerous. and just chase of the occasional steppe bandit group that wanders into your areas of economic interest

The other problem about them is how easily they can catch villagers, and only 5 of them or sth like that are able to take on the villager groups. Due to their speed they negatively impact your economy more then the other bandit factions. Its possible to keep them out of your lands but its much more difficult. The only question is, is it intended that the eastern factions have a much worse time with bandits or not?

That's why you constantly hunt them down in Khuzait lands with a force of only horse archers and assign parties that you give horse archers to.

I have to say though even after clearing bandits, and setting up workshops based on production of nearby villages and eventually even desperately flooding the market with raw materials and buying up and converting competitors in nearby towns, my Khuzait workshops barely made money

 

[Apocal]

No you wouldn't be equally as fast without the 10% speed buff. If you're moving at 8.1 with it, you'd be moving at ~7.3 without it, ergo you cannot catch steppe bandits with full cavalry who move at 7.5+. Also the scout perks do nothing.

On realistic, you cannot really have any footmen in your party (with horses or not) if you want to catch steppe bandits. You need to have basically a small force entirely made of cavalry with a maximum size only a couple larger than the steppe bandit party and you need a decent high morale bonus from 80+ morale.

This makes the game devolve into tedious micromanagement of your party composition and is only possible once you own a town because you need to dump all gear and excess horses and pack animals into storage, dump all prisoners into prison, dump all troops into the garrison and pick a few select cavalry (and if your garrison is nearly full you need to dump them in a party or two), and only then can you hunt the bandits. And since generally you'll want as many cavalry as possible, you take as many cavalry as you can to exceed the speed of the largest steppe bandit party you see. Then after killing them (and you can maybe only take a couple prisoners), you need to go back to the town and repeat the above process, reducing your party size to handle the next smallest steppe bandit party, and repeat this tedious, time-consuming process ad nauseam. Keep in mind you'll only be moving at 0.1 or 0.2 faster than them (and often only during daytime) as well so you need to chase each party for days if you can't trap them into a corner. Oh, and you'll probably lose a couple cavalry from stray arrows or lucky lances along the way. Enjoy.

It is easier to just squat on top of their hideouts. They will come to you and willingly engage. You still have to slim down your party size, but I've had 35ish troops and still effectively vacuumed up most of the area's steppe bandits.

 

[durbal]

It is easier to just squat on top of their hideouts. They will come to you and willingly engage. You still have to slim down your party size, but I've had 35ish troops and still effectively vacuumed up most of the area's steppe bandits.

I'll try that. I had been trying out a 'honeypot' tactic whereby I would take some peasants and assign them to a companion then leave the companion in the middle of a bunch of them before engaging with my main force. Seemed to worked pretty well, but it was very fiddly and sometimes the peasants would get wiped before I could engage...